We're not going to have another opinion piece on the alleged criminal sexual actions of two ND football players on the board. This is doubly true with a politically minded site where the author goes into the pros of his position vs. campaign statements in Senatorial campaigns and compares the alleged crimes in South Bend with those in the Penn State athletic complexes.

"We bring you to Michigan to take care of Michigan; your job is to protect that block M."
-Carol Hutchins

"This is the EMU game, not the emo game."

I had absolutely no clue what I was reading, so I took it down. If someone can decipher the meaning of this OP, can you please let me know if this was the right or wrong decision, and what the post was asking or reporting? I'd honestly love to know.

benji wilson, force in highschool baskketball in the mid 80s...i apologize for the sporadic element to this post, but i have been very busy today and took the only 60 min of my day to watch the 30 for 30 on Benji Wilson...basically the best player in high-school in 1984, 5...died because he was sent to a hospital not equipped/motivated to treat him....(not diminishing the gang violence/stupidity that resulted in him getting shot)...feel for his mother, must watch...good kid and inspired a community around him....got to get this off my chest before i go to bed...go blue, beat ohio.....discusion please from anyone with a recolection

"We bring you to Michigan to take care of Michigan; your job is to protect that block M."
-Carol Hutchins

Today I saw the ESPN special on Benji Wilson. I was really moved by it. I was especially moved by the good he did in his community, the terrible gang violence that resulted in his fatal wounding, and the medical care disparity that was evident in that his local hospital was not equipped to treat what should've been a treatable wound.

I feel terribly for his mother, and the rest of his community. It's been sitting with me uneasily all day. Did any of you see the special and what are your feelings on it?

Thanks for the help, M-Dubb. That thread continued so late into the evening that I couldn't keep up with it. Some people have so much time, creating an account just to troll rival blogs. Trollers gonna troll, I guess.

Confession: I think I may have gone a little overboard in sending Chuckwoodson2 to Bolivia so dramatically. That said, I'm not going to tolerate bad-mouthing high school kids, including ones that choose Ohio over Michigan. Its classless and tacky, especially if the assertions are unfounded.

Seriously, to use an arbitrary "smell test" to prevent discussion of something that both seems at first read a substantial piece of investigative journalism and will dominate college football until signing day seems shortsighted at best. What's the harm in discussing it?

Particularly when an article is researched in such obvious detail. The "more credible outlets" PGB wants to hear from were the ones almost certainly printing nonsense about an imaginary person without looking into it further.

The further iteration of this point is that this blog was begun in large part because of rightful frustration with the shoddy job that the "mainstream media" (ack) did in covering Michigan football and college football more generally. Now, however, we need to wait for this story to be validated by those same institutions (and deadspin is arguably now part of the mainstream sports media) before it can be commented on?

The mind, it bottles.

As for the claim that people may say something stupid that they regret? Like that doesn't happen numerous times a day on this board, which seems to police such behavior pretty well.

Look, I take no offense to you all disagreeing with me. The story and its lack of real information doesn't sit right with me (they don't prove anything, they simple refute possible supporting information). But I happily throw myself at the feet of the all-powerful Brian and Seth and defer to their better judgment. I just didn't want crazy comments flying around only to find out the story is bogus. I made the judgment call and I will not be offended if they overrule me.

It may not seem so, but I appreciate all of these comments. I felt the story was shady but I quickly saw that I was the only one to react the same way. I'm glad you all called me out on it and took the time to read the story more closely after more information came out. I still don't really understand what the hell is going on and I obviously wasn't purposely trying to squash information/comments for no reason. I'm just glad that ND came out so quickly and responded so we can get on with the discussion - I was initially afraid that the story would sit there and we'd comment for days only to find out that it was all bullsh-t. But I definitely don't take offense to being called out on being wrong. I live and learn.

Crushing discussion of the Te'o story is utterly asinine. The fact that we allow 10,000 threads about Kate Upton, endless speculation on our very own players and commited athletes, but quash a link to a gigantic story at a website with a history of investigative pieces?

Former mod opinion: it's one thing to allow speculation about who's starting at the 3-tech or whether we should buckle up. It's an entirely different situation to allow speculation about potentially libelous, and somewhat unsubstantiated, claims about a playe perpetuating a hoax.

The same thing happens when someone starts a thread that says, "I heard from a reliable source that [Player X] has been accused of [Crime Y]." If it's substantiated, the worst that happens is that you have to wait a couple of hours to talk about something on the board, which is absolutely worth it when you look at what happens if a claim (however legitimate-looking) is false.

I actually appreciated the constructive criticism. I tend to err on the side of caution and hence you saw how I handled it. But there will always be someone to look at it differently and all I can say is that I take my marching orders from Brian and Seth. I lived and learned but if certain people think I'm asinine and don't like how I operate they can contact the higher-ups directly. Otherwise, I'll continue to do my best to protect the brand and probably make more mistakes along the way.

Some more constructive criticism, taken with a day to digest all of this: One thing you can do on a story like this (if there ever is one remotely this wild again) is check twitter for the immediate reaction of "respectable" sources. Twitter pretty much blew up when this came out, and some of this blowing up came from guys who write for espn.com and si.com, and they weren't questioning the story's accuracy, either. And, naturally, other bloggers whose opinions you respect will have takes on it. Personally, I found out from a quick retweet by @yostbuilt, but the second tweet (almost instantly) I saw about it was from a MSM political writer who was credibly flabbergasted.

I don't know how long it was "locked" be ause I learned about it when ESPN broke into PTI for it. So if that was already happening, maybe it was too slow to free it. But I don't know that it's really a mod's job to monitor all forms of media to see if a story has "legs" to it. No one is going to die for having to wait half an hour to discuss something. There are probably a thousand posts on it since. It got discussed when it showed merit. People getting bent out if shape by it have some entitlement thing going. I'd rather err on the side of class than expediency. It's like pay walled information. Maybe you have to wait ten minutes for it to be posted here, but you feel less dirty about it.

To go along with your comment and stephenrjking's, the most helpful thing anyone can do if we get a situation where we're trying to see if something is an actual story or not is to let us know about another outlet picking it up, or Brian mentioning it elsewhere or something along those lines. Whoever made the CBS Radio thread got the word out, but did it in a way that delayed any action we could take. Posting that information on the sticky is the best way to make sure we can take care of a similar situation.

When I got back to my computer after all of this was unfolding, I didn't go straight to the article to look for sources or to Twitter or ESPN; there was already a mini-firestorm here to deal with that took my immediate attention. With the four threads on the topic plus multiple comments in the sticky arguing against locking it, that took some time to sort through before getting in touch with profit and sorting out what we should do.

TL;DR: Posting straight facts on the sticky will get the outcome you desire more quickly than anything else. This isn't meant to discourage criticism, which profit and I are both fine with, but a lot of it before a decision is even final is more likely to delay a change than bring it about.

"We bring you to Michigan to take care of Michigan; your job is to protect that block M."
-Carol Hutchins

I know I was frustrated last night when posting about the search function (ALL CAPS), and I'd still love if people did their due diligence before posting, but the OP took the negs in stride and didn't get off work until 11:30.

Not so cool story bro: my first OP was a double post and got negged when it still counted. If I had to guess, TallyWolverine won't be making a double post any time soon.

"We bring you to Michigan to take care of Michigan; your job is to protect that block M."
-Carol Hutchins

You got that right!! I told myself there is no way this hasn't been a topic, but I didn't listen to my gut!! It was only my 3rd post in a year as a member, plus I missed all the advice to search the site. I was laughing, knowing the abuse forthcoming. Thanks for letting me do a faceplant gracefully as possible.

I missed the "pussy" and Scarlett Johansson comments. I don't like hearing "trash player", but that's not quite personal; the other stuff is obviously the textbook definition of going over that boundary.

"We bring you to Michigan to take care of Michigan; your job is to protect that block M."
-Carol Hutchins

I know a lot of people think banning takes too long at times, but it's not something I like to do as a first action. He's now gotten a warning and has been docked enough points to draw attention to one of the staff, ZL or profit if there is another post like that.

Either way, nobody will be seeing more than one stupid comment from his account again.

"We bring you to Michigan to take care of Michigan; your job is to protect that block M."
-Carol Hutchins

I put up an open thread for all things Te'o and cut and paste the content in this OP in that open thread so that it didn't get lost. Trying to keep the board clean as possible and limit the number of Te'o threads.

I've noticed that some users have levels higher than 2. For whatever reason on my account when I'm at 2, without being negged it will go back to 1. For example yesterday I was at 2 and my comment in the Bears thread was given a +1, today I am back to level 1. Just curious how everything worked.

but from my understanding it just calculates the number of upvotes or downvotes (or no-votes) you've received in the past x posts. If nobody voted on your last ten posts, you'd have a karma value of one; if all of your last ten posts are negative, you have 0 or -1, and if they're upvoted to certain levels you can get to 2, 3, 4, 5. I don't know what forumla Brian uses, and ten was just an example.

Thread was misleading. Kate doesn't do any washing of cars in the video, let alone wear a wet t-shirt or get all soapy. OP, do you work for Mercedes? If not, Y U no post more KUBEWBS in a thread like this??? /s (in case it wasn't clear)

I think the OP got his answers, or at least a little help. These kinds of topics are clearly out of bounds but during the offseason we generally try to leave the threads up for at least a little bit so that members can get some assistance. Its the MGoExperience!

I think the OP got his answers, or at least a little help. These kinds of topics are clearly out of bounds but during the offseason we generally try to leave the threads up for at least a little bit so that members can get some assistance. Its the MGoExperience!